Callsign: King II- Underworld

He decided to give them exactly six seconds, and started counting “Mississippis” under his breath. When he got to six, with probably no more than seventy-five yards separating the two vehicles, he flipped his PVS-7 up, away from his eye, and switched on the headlights.

Twin halogen beams speared out across the dusty darkness and transfixed the second Humvee. He knew from experience what a bright light could do to a night vision device and to the person wearing it; the flash would have overloaded the electronics of a PVS-7 type device, rendering it useless for several hours thereafter, but in the instant before that happened, the wearer would feel like he’d stared directly at the sun. The wearer’s other, unaided eye wouldn’t fare much better; with pupils dilated for maximum natural night vision, any flash of light would be painful and would leave an imprint like fireworks on the retinas for at least several minutes thereafter.

The trick with the lights hadn’t done his own night vision any favors. King switched the headlights off right away, and lowered his PVS-7 into place.

The two Humvees were still on a collision course, separated by only a few yards. The only reason that they hadn’t already crashed was that the other driver, possibly blinded, had let his foot off the accelerator and tapped the brakes.

King swerved hard right. The Humvee skidded into the turn and the back driver’s side wheel banged off the front bumper of the other truck. There was a crunch as the fiberglass hood cover splintered but the damage was purely cosmetic. The impact knocked King’s Humvee back around and it scraped along the side of the gunship, but then they were past, and back on course.

There was a staccato eruption behind them, a sound like a car backfiring repeatedly, and King ducked. “Stay down.”

It didn’t sound like any of the rounds had hit. King hoped the gunner was literally firing blind, strafing the general area where he thought they were, using the “spray and pray” method. The problem was, sometimes that method worked.

He kept going, taking as much speed as the vehicle and terrain would let him have, following the descending flank of a hillside in hopes that it would take them out of the line of fire.

A glance at the side mirror revealed nothing—not the absence of pursuit, but rather the absence of the mirror itself. Evidently, it had been a casualty of the sideswipe. King risked poking his head out the window, and saw lights moving behind them. The crew of the M1026 had eschewed blackout mode and were now running with full lights. They were also turning around.

King glanced at his watch. Thirty-six minutes had elapsed since he and Nina had left the Bluelight facility. In about ten more, it would activate again, summoning a fresh horde of Mogollon Monsters to assault anything that moved. He dug out his phone and brought up the GPS app. He’d marked the Bluelight facility as a waypoint earlier. According to the app, it was now about three miles dead ahead.

The Humvee bounced and slid, and King had to wrestle with the steering wheel to maintain a semblance of control as he climbed hills and shot straight down the slopes. Behind him, the lights of the pursuing vehicle blazed like tiny suns. The driver of the M1026 couldn’t close the gap; both Humvees were traveling well beyond the recommended off-road speed, and nearly at the limit of what was possible, but the pursuing truck had one significant advantage. They could reach out across the distance and ruin King’s day. The arc of tracer fire, sporadically ricocheting off the desert floor, sometimes too close for comfort, indicated that they were trying to do exactly that.

As King climbed a steep slope, he heard more bullets hammer against the metal deck of the rear cargo area. The gunner was dialing in on them and it was only a matter of time before rounds starting tearing through the fabric covering the cab.

“Enough of this shit,” King rasped. He tore off his borrowed helmet and the PVS-7 with it, and turned the headlights on again. There was no sense in trying to do what he had to do next in near total darkness.

He kept the accelerator to the floor, ignoring the deafening roar of the overburdened diesel engine, until the truck crested the hill. For an instant, the Humvee’s tires lost contact and it sailed through air, traveling almost thirty feet before finally crunching onto the downslope. Pierce and Nina were pitched about the interior like bits of popcorn, but King ignored their curses. His attention was focused on the glistening mirror-like surface that stretched out directly in front of him.